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By Root 519 0

with tiny balconies tacked on. The “lower market” is a row of shops along the road to the dzong; the “upper market” is a circle of shops around an enormous prayer wheel. Prayer wheels are cylinders inscribed with mantras, ranging from hand-held to room-sized. Spun around in a clockwise motion by the devout, they operate on the same principle as prayer flags: when set in motion, the printed mantras multiply the prayers being sent out for the benefit of all sentient beings. We sit on a bench outside a shop in the upper market and watch the traffic—horses carrying sacks of rice, two old women chatting beside the prayer wheel, children chasing a dog with a string of red chilies around its neck. Parked outside a shop, beside a blue UNDP jeep, is a battered bus with telltale streaks marring the Bhutan Government Transport Service sign painted across its side. “That must be the Vomit Comet,” Lorna says. “And look over there, that must be the fire station.” She points to four red, dented metal buckets hanging from a pole.

A white woman in a kira emerges from a shop. “Well, hello,” she says. “You must be the new Canadians. I’m Nancy. I expected you here three weeks ago but then the roads closed. What to do.” She shepherds us into the Puen Soom Hotel, a tiny restaurant in the corner of the market, and orders tea. There is a poster of the Canadian Rockies on the wall, and a miniature Canadian flag propped up among the bottles of whiskey behind the bar—signs of other Canadians in eastern Bhutan who use Tashigang as a meeting place. Nancy has a hangover, from a farewell party the night before. She is on her way out, her contract has finished, and she is returning to Canada. She has to be in Ottawa in three weeks, for an interview, for a job teaching in the Arctic, she tells us.

It must be something in the water, I think: no one here is content with a moderately difficult life. They all want to be four days off the road, and then, when they have served their time and can go back home to a nice warm apartment with a bus stop around the corner, they go teach in the Arctic!

“Is there diesel in Tashigang?” Lorna asks.

Nancy looks up, surprised. “You mean you were sent out here without any spare diesel?”

“The driver managed to find some along the way, but there’s none in Bumthang or Mongar.”

“Well, there’s none here either,” Nancy says, sighing. “We’ll have to go ask Dasho Dzongda for help this afternoon.” The Dzongda is the district administrator, and Dasho is a title, like Sir, conferred by the King.

Lorna sighs, too. “I guess we have to get gowned up, then,” she says.

We finish the tea, and Lorna and I walk up the ridge behind the town and sit under some prayer flags, looking out across the narrow river valley. The hillsides nearby are brown and dry and detailed with shrubs and rocky outcrops and zigzagging paths, but in the distance, the mountains become insubstantial in the haze. Tashigang Dzong is on a lower spur to our right, above the turquoise river. Across the river and up behind the ridges is Bidung, Lorna’s new home. Somewhere south is Pema Gatshel. Somewhere west is Thimphu. And beyond Thimphu—but no, I am too tired to retrace the journey mentally. I want to just click my heels three times and be home.

After more tea at the Puen Soom, we struggle into our kiras and walk through the lower market with Nancy to the dzong. A policeman stands at the gate, beside a jumble of worn rubber flip-flops and plastic sandals. “You have to wear shoes and socks into a dzong,” Nancy explains, “or else go in barefoot.” We step into the cool inner courtyard. Directly across from us is the massive stone wall of the dzong’s three-storied temple. On either side of the courtyard are offices with thick wooden doors. Handlettered signs pasted on the lintels announce the DISTRICT EDUCATION OFFICER, DISTRICT ANIMAL HUSBANDRY OFFICER, DISTRICT AGRICULTURE OFFICER. Very young, freshly shorn monks peer down at us from the wooden balconies above, and giggle when we wave to them. We are led into the Dzongda’s chamber, where we sit on a bench under the